184 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Oatman, nf IlL.i. p., drop the dollar 

 queen business altogether, and sell 

 nothing Init tested queens. He could 

 thus continue in the business that has 

 become " second nature to him," and 

 could also make money. 

 Rogersville, Mich. 



CoRitECTiON : About the middle 

 of the second column, page 149, is a 

 sentence that commences as follows : 

 "I, at one time, had nuclei." It 

 should read : " I, at one time, luid 

 eighty nuclei." W. Z. H. 



[A reply to the above may be found 

 on the first page.— Ed.] 



For tlie American Bee Journal. 



Does it Pay to Rear Cheap Oiieens J 



KEV. A. SALISBURY. 



It does seem to me almost any one 

 can observe, that the advocates of un- 

 tested queens rely but little upon their 

 own argnments. as proof thnt the 

 business is remunerative. Mr. Hutch- 

 inson asks the question, on page 149 

 of the Bee Journal: "Mr. S., I 

 ask if you have not indulged in too 

 many spread eagle advertisements ? " 

 He also informs us when the flow of 

 honey is scarce, he feeds cheap food— 

 " It was grajte sugar that I used for 

 feeding." Of course, Mr. H. is not a 

 sloven or stingy, that he does not like 

 to see a neat advertisement, butecon- 

 omy says, " can't ;ifEord it on dollar 

 queens." The same is also true of 

 grape sugar (glucose). He knows, as 

 well as any of us (from reports made 

 on glucose), it is inferior and un- 

 healthy food, compared with good 

 granulated or coffee A sugar, or honey; 

 but economy says take the dose- 

 economy with Mr. H., and likely 

 money in his pocket, but hard on the 

 constitutions of embryo queens. If 

 the reader will take the trouble to 

 turn to Mr. H.'s article he will see, 

 to make a good showing on untested 

 queens, that Mr. H. puts' all his in- 

 crease of colonies at $7 each, and all 

 his surplus honey at 15 cents per 

 pound. To me that is a new leaf just 

 turned. He also acknowledges in 

 that report that he allowed his expert 

 nothing for time spent in rearing the 

 queens ; and it is altogether probable 

 he boarded himself. A weak show- 

 ing for an honorable, remunerative 

 business. 



Mr. A. G. Hill, editor of the Bee- 

 Keepers' Ouide, (once if not now an 

 advocate of dollar queens), in the 

 sequel of his review of the article 

 referred to in the Bee Journal, 

 says : " And even with our economy 

 and improvements, we can hardly 

 make the price of a suit of clothes 

 more than Mr. Salisbury." My bal- 

 ance sheet fell short $12. This looks 

 to me like a very small business— half 

 a suit of clothes for a season's labor 

 (don't forget the $12 discrepuncy in 

 my balance slieet comes out of Mr. 

 Hill's suit, which leaves him witli half 

 a suit, if he intended a $24 suit). He 

 evidently felt it was a poor showing 

 for a remunerative business. It may 

 do for a man of leisure, or boys that 



have nothing else to do, but preposter- 

 ous for a man of experience, with a 

 family to maintain and ctiildren to 

 educate. 



It is true that the cheap queen 

 traffic opens a wide door for fraud up- 

 on the purchaser. The presumable 

 harm it has already done, yet doubt- 

 less largely lies cloaked behind the 

 curtain. Like the glucose trade, it 

 was a fraud in the beginning, which 

 drove honest houses out of the sugar 

 trade, and supplied the public with an 

 inferior, unhealthy article as a substi- 

 tute. Notwithstanding this may be 

 the case in our business, it does not 

 necessarily follow that all queens sold 

 for untested are a fraud upon the pur- 

 chaser. All tested queens come from 

 those once untested. The truth in a 

 nutshell is, tirst, it presents a strong 

 temptation to the queen-breeder ; 

 second, lie cannot make an honoraljle 

 living dependent upon selling " dollar 

 queens," and last, the purchaser runs 

 a risk in getting a good queen. 



While it is a fact, that all honest 

 dealers discard and destroy all queens 

 that present any external appearance 

 of imperfection, yet imperfections 

 are sometimes concealed from the eye, 

 and after a queen has been tested, 

 however valuable the mother and tine 

 the stock, she is found not to be worth 

 hive room, and no one to blame — it is 

 the sporting of nature. 



Camargo, 111. 



For the American Bee Journal, 



Is Our Chemist Abroad 1 



.T. H. MARTIN. 



While reading your editorial, page 

 66, upon granulating glucose, I be- 

 came disagreeably conscious that our 

 chemist is not abroad with eyes and 

 ears open, to learn the wondrous pro- 

 gress of the present age, and to keep 

 the bee-keeping industry upon an even 

 race with other and recently dis- 

 covered industries. Here we have an 

 industry and a product, the history of 

 which we can trace back through the 

 ages, that has not in its chemical 

 features progressed one step. The 

 honey that is put upon our tables, in 

 the comb or liquid, is just the same as 

 when Samson ate the comb honey 

 from the lion's carcass, and lapped the 

 extracted honey from his lingers. 



But I hear some one say : My dear 

 sir, what do you yiropose to do with 

 our beautiful honey, are you not 

 satisfied with the pure, wholesome, 

 clean article, as now put upon the 

 market i* In answer, I may say : I 

 am not ; for I know there is a wide 

 field here for improvement. 



The hrst improvement I would sug- 

 gest, is to bleach or extract the color- 

 ing matter from our 'dark grades of 

 honey. Buckwheat honey seems to 

 be the best subject to commence upon 

 and I would inform our chemist, that 

 a fortune awaits him, as soon as he 

 will present to us the magic filter that 

 will remove the disagreeable color, 

 and give us :i nearly uniform grade of 

 honey. I think the proper time to 

 :i Hack the color is when the honey is 

 first gathered and before it is sealed. 



My next suggestion is to dry granu- 

 late our honey. That it can be done 

 is hinted to us very strongly by dame 

 nature herself, for every bee-keeper 

 who has handled extracted honey, 

 knows that small patches of honey 

 upon the stavesof the barrel will often 

 be found in an apparently granulated 

 condition so that it can be handled 

 like dry sugar. Will our chemist tell us 

 why these particular parts dry, and 

 also tell us how to serve the whole 

 barrel in like manner ? The only ex- 

 periment I can recall, that has been 

 tried upon this problem, was by Mr. 

 A. I. Root, several years ago. This 

 peculiarity of certain grades of honey 

 came to his notice and several parcels 

 of candied honey were hung up in wire 

 baskets, to dry, but I think the ex- 

 periment was a total failure. 



I could give other suggestions for 

 improvements, as to the use of honey, 

 but will leave the subject for our 

 chemist to give us much needed in- 

 formation upon the chemical constitu- 

 ents of honey, tlie coloring matter, 

 and the flavor. 



The glucose industry, not a score of 

 years old, has passed from one stage 

 of improvement to another until a 

 substance hard and bitter, and loaded 

 with acids, is now to be put iqion the 

 market, with the bitternesseliminated 

 and in granulated form ; and although 

 used as an adulterant in all other 

 sweets, the spirit of improvement, 

 which posesses the manufacturer is 

 worthy of imitation by the bee-keep- 

 ing fraternity. 



Unless our chemist gets around 

 lively, he will be left so far behind he 

 will never win his share of the laurels 

 of renown. 



Hartford, N. Y. 



F<ir the American Bee JoumaL 



Manufacture of Comb Honey. 



H. S. HACKMAN. 



Mr. Editor :— I thank you for the 

 kind notice given to my last com- 

 munication on Honey in Sections. 

 Hoping it will not be intruding on 

 your good nature, by my again calling 

 the attention of the first question, 

 " Do people in large cities buy and use 

 our beautiful section honey, and at 

 the same time think they are using or 

 eating artificial comb honeyV" I tliink 

 they clo. 



It was not my aim to prove or dis- 

 prove the possibility or impossibility 

 of making artificial comb honey, for 

 that is a settled fact with me — it has 

 not yet been done. But to prove to 

 my honey producing friends that pure 

 matured honey is bought and used 

 largely by consumers, under the im- 

 pression tliat it is manufactured 

 honey. This false impression is partly 

 brought about by unprincipled, over- 

 anxious men in producing some- 

 thing new and novel. 



I had the following conversation 

 with one of our grain merchants some 

 2 years ago, which will partly explain 

 my assertions. He said : " I saw a 

 nice lot of comb honey at the Exposi- 

 tion building in Chicago, and so much 



